Discovering the Western Past A Look at the Evidence, Volume II: Since 1500

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This successful Western history version of the popular Discovering series provides a broad range of both visual and written sources. The unique pedagogical framework includes The Problem, Sources and Method, The Evidence, Questions to Consider, and Epilogue and Evaluation sections in each chapter. This structure promotes critical thinking, sharpens analytical skills, and builds student interest in the subject matter. The text emphasizes historical study as interpretation rather than memorization of data, with actual documents and artifacts from which students develop answers to historical questions.

The Spread of the Reformation

The Evidence: Martin Luther's

sermon in Erfurt, Germany, 1521

Three 16th-century hymns Illustrations by Matthias Gerung, 1546

Woodcuts by Lucas Cranach and an unknown artist of religious pamphlets

Anonymous German pamphlet, 1523

Staging Absolutism

The Evidence: Jean Bodin

The Six Books of the Republic, 1576

Jacques B?nigne Bossuet

Politics Drawn from the Very

Words of the Holy Scriptures, 1678

The Duke of Saint-Simon on the Reign of Louis XIV

Royal portraits

The Mask of Apollo Engravings of Louis XIV as Roman

Emperor in Carousel of 1662

Illustrations of Versailles and Marly

The Mind of an Age

Science and Religion Confront

Eighteenth-Century Natural Disaster

The Evidence: Gabriel Malagrida and John Wesley on the cause of the Lisbon earthquake

Voltaire on Newtonian physics, 1733

Alexander Pope's An Essay on Man, 1734

Observation, from Denis Diderot's Encyclopedia, ca.1765

Natural History, General and Specific

Leclerc Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, by Voltaire and a letter to Voltaire from Jean-Jacques

Rousseau regarding the poem

"The Essay on Miracles," 1748

The System of Nature Paul-Henry Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, 1770

European Material Life, 1600-1800

The Evidence: Spring Agricultural

Labor from a fifteenth-century

French book of hours, Jean, Duc de Berry

Table of agricultural yields, 1600-1820

The Effects of Harvest Failure

A Meal of Gruel in a Dutch Peasant Family, 1653

A Peasant Kitchen with an Open Fire in the South Tyrol

Baltic grain exports, 1562-1650

Exports of slaves from Africa

Sugar imports in France, England, and Wales

Imports of groceries into England and Wales, 1559-1800

Illustration, "The Coffee House Patriots

or News from St. Eusatia," 1781

Value of wardrobes and linen, Paris, 1700-1789

"The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn'd Honest,"

Bernard Mandeville Tables of ownership of consumer goods

A Day in the French Revolution: July 14, 1789

The Evidence

The Bastille as a Symbol

The M?moires of Simon-Nicolas-Henri Linguet

Photograph of the rue du Fer-?-Moulin, 1870

Floor plan of a typical residential building in Faubourg

st.-Antoine Graphs depicting wheat prices in Paris and France in the eighteenth century

Table of bread and wage earner's budget

Map of Paris by economic circumstances of residents, 1790

Table of the trades of the Bastille insurgents, 1789

Marguerite Painaigre's petition to the French National

Assembly Travel account, Arthur Young, 1789

Duke of Dorset's report on Paris to the Foreign

Office in London

Labor Old and New

The Impact of the Industrial Revolution

The Evidence: Sabastien Le Prestre de Vaubans description of agricultural labor in France, about 1700

Testimony of an agricultural worker's wife and former factory worker, 1842

List of holidays during the work year in 17th-century Lille

France Guild regulations in the Prussian woolen industry, 1797

La Rochefoucauld describes the putting-out system in Rouen, France, 1781-1783

Scenes of weaving in Germany and England

Luddite labor protest in Yorkshire, 1812

Rules for workers in the foundry and engineering works of the Royal Overseas

Trading Company, Berlin, 1844

Apprenticeship contract for young women employed in the silk mills of Tarare, France, 1850s

Report of the Sadler Committee, 1832

Working conditions of a female textile worker in Germany, 1880s and 1890s

Report on the employment of children in three British mines, 1841-1842

Two Programs for Social and Political Change

Liberalism and Socialism

The Evidence

Alexis de Tocqueville's views on history

The problems of democracy, revolution

Ideals of government

Karl Marx's writings on history from

The Communist Manifesto

The Revolution of 1848 in Paris

Ideals of government and economy

Vienna and Paris, 1850-1930

The Development of the Modern City The Evidence

Illustrations of Vienna and Paris in the 1850s, leather workers on the Bi?vre River

Paris Drawing and photograph of the Viennese Ringstrasse

Maps of Paris and photographs of the construction of and the completed